


Mission: Complete

by cathtice



Series: Mission [2]
Category: Aberrant (RPG)
Genre: Original Character(s), Role-Playing Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 01:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathtice/pseuds/cathtice
Summary: Getting your hands dirty.





	

"How do you know it’s right? How do you do it best?"

"You should ask someone else. Your team leader – the Lady Ekaterina will know. I’m here to kill you if you do something wrong."

"I ... I know. That’s why I asked you. She already thinks I’m spoilt; I can’t make it harder for her."

"Then... Either it gets easier with time, or it’s always ... fun, or it’s always a violation. You have to decide if it’s right or not. And never talk to the person you’re killing, and always make it quick and clean."

***

There are four of us in the car; I’m driving, I think because Mr Smith wants to keep his hands free, because Mercy kind of expects the car to talk to her and because Bombay Sapphire Doesn’t Do That Kind Of Thing. I drive at the right speed through the barricades and checkpoints and suburban housing schemes next door to the free-fire zone we’ve been staying in. A hand comes from the shadows and gives us a box with a note and some backup and cleanup. At least I don’t have to worry quite so much about showing up when I’m fire, even if mysterious hands-coming-out-of-the-shadows are kind of unusual. Well, for this place. I park in the maze of little streets to one side of the roofed-over complex and we start to fly.

***

I’m being carried by Sapphire as we go through the wall. At least it gives me time to concentrate. The Nietzchean is an old man, walking with the woman the briefing said was his daughter; she’s blonde and perfect and her wings are already beating her toward us by the time we’re in place. The tower Mercy was worried by is destroyed with a flick of Sapphire’s hand, and the stone snake monster scorches itself when it tries to hit me. The Valkyrie falls from the sky neatly into Mercy’s mercy, and as the fire rises in me the light goes out in her eyes. 

***

The old man looks at me and smiles, warm and hopeful. I know him. Sapphire is busy pulling the snake apart as Tötentanz blinks from wall to wall to spear-driven assault. The blades pass through the fire and are consumed; Mercy and Sapphire’s shields are harder pressed. Mercy cuts his head off as the sniper girl (Vector?) tries to defend the old man – Sapphire looks horrified as her carefully-aimed truck accidentally shatters Vector’s face. I bathe the old man again, and fiery tears trickle down his face as he welcomes me. I want to be closer to him, to show him how much better he can be.

***

There is only joy in servitude.  
There is only rightness in faith.  
There is only one true way.  
One right.  
One Reich.

***

Mercy nearly screams as Tötentanz shoves a spear into her back; she pulls out of my mind leaving the taste of frying eggs and grilling bacon, red wine in bolognese sauce, Rick smiling and Hugh laughing.

The old man’s body is cut in half at my feet.

Tötentanz is flung half way across Berlin as a jumbo jet is thrown at us; Sapphire’s hands not graceful any more as she claws at the air to hold onto the passenger plane. I burn out to make the carrier that’ll let me take Mercy to the magnetokinetic, and shove a foot through the dead face of the man who violated me.

His eyes were opening.

***

I go back to him. I have to; Mercy and Sapphire are fighting for the lives of the people on the plane and there’s no one else there.

I sit with him and pray with him and try to offer him absolution as my hands are in his head and in his heart. (never talk to the person you’re killing)

His mind is in my mind, my hands are in his heart. 

His hands are weak and empty. My mind is torn apart. (always make it quick and clean)

I feel him die. (I break the rules)

***

"The target is down."

Sapphire cradles me in blue forcefields, and I get to pretend for a second that they’re someone else’s before Elek speaks.

"Green leader is down. Get here fast."

***

We take Vector with us; I burn out a little more trying to keep her alive. 

There are a swarm of rats and the White Knights fighting Tötentanz. He dances far better than they do, though they have numbers. How long had they been holding him there? Sapphire and Mercy go to them while I fly faster to Lady Ekaterina. She’s unconscious, bleeding out with a fiery sword in her back – but the Paladin is dead with half his skull cut open. Elek levers the sword out, and my fire brings her back enough to stand – though not enough to do much more. She still does, though; stumbling with Elek to the White Knights.

***

I can’t do anything else, so I sit on the edge of the tower block with Stone and talk about wrestling while I watch the massacre. Tötentanz heals so fast his body reforms around the holes that Mercy makes in his head and heart. (The wounds she makes aren’t on fire. Tötentanz doesn’t choke wetly and cry. You can cry when you’re on fire; from everywhere. Your skin cries, your eyes cry, blisters weep and fluids boil. You can’t cry when you’re fire; you don’t have a body to weep with.)

Then Elek shifts into a spider-thing and eats him.

***

Out of all the eight or nine of them, three are left alive. Out of all of us, we all lived.

Smith congratulates us on a tidy and successful mission.

If this is success, I think I’m not very good at it. If this ever happens again (and curiosity sparks a little bit through the revulsion), then it’ll never be an assassination.


End file.
